Under Her Skin (9 page)

“Okay,” Kade said, holding out the vials. “I’m presuming one per fang, right?” I nodded, my upper body bouncing and weaving just a bit.

“Here goes, then. Remember, bite the plastic, not me.” A bright lance of anxiety drove through the blue scent when I stretched my jaws wide, but it retreated again as my fangs delicately pierced the cling-wrap covering the vials. Without any thought from me, the venom spurted out, my body jerking a little as the liquid pumped through me, soothing an ache I hadn’t even realized was there.

Not for the first time, I wondered what it would be like to bite a living creature.

The thought both horrified and enticed me.

Dad had worked hard to teach me empathy, and part of that training had included forbidding me to hunt live animals in my serpent form. I understood the restriction, even agreed with it—but sometimes my serpent and human instincts warred with one another.

Kade moved closer to me so he could balance one of the vials against his knee and lifted a hand toward me, speaking softly. “I’m going to help, Lindi. This will pull more of the venom out, okay?” His voice dropped even lower. “I know you can hear and understand me. Please stay calm.” Then his fingertips were pressing against the side of my head, behind my jaw, stroking firmly. The touch of his hand made me shiver, both in fear and anticipation, and I could feel my venom glands respond, pumping more and more of the viscous fluid through my fangs and into the glass vials.

“Good,” Kade said softly. “Good. Now I’m going to do the other side, okay?”

The almost sexual anticipation sent a quiver down my entire body as he shifted around to make sure the vials stayed steady, then stroked the other gland. Again, my body responded instantly, sending more venom into the glass.

If I could have moaned in release, I would have.

God. Was this how I reacted to the touch of someone I was attracted to? Pumping out poison? And yet I couldn’t help myself.

No wonder the rest of the shapeshifter world wanted everyone like me dead.

No. I had never bitten anyone. Never hurt anyone. I would never hurt anyone.

I couldn’t help the physiological response. But I could be sure that it never happened except to help others. And that’s what this was—an attempt to save Kirstie and anyone else like her.

Maybe I was a monster, but I could be sure to help rather than hurt.

I shuddered as the last of the venom poured out of me in an almost sexual release.

And then I pulled back, lifting away from the vials and coiling in on myself. The floor was cold and hard, and I wished I’d had the foresight to shift into Suzy’s tank.

“Wow.” Kade was peering into the vials, examining the thick, yellow liquid. “Yep. That’s the stuff.”

He stood up and carefully unwound the rubber bands, then peeled off the plastic wrap. He stoppered the vials.

“Now,” he said. “I’m going to step outside while you change. And then we need to talk.”

Five minutes later, I pulled my clothes back on, as weary and languorous as if I really had just finished having some sort of sexual experience. Or had eaten too much.

I didn’t know if full-blood snakes felt that way, but I had often thought that it would explain their long sluggish periods after meals. I hadn’t explained the question, but I had asked Dad why snakes took so much longer to digest their food than I did. He gave some long, semi-scientific explanation about the energy I used to shift and to maintain my warm-blooded side’s body temperature. In the end, I finally decided the snakes had it better—and for a time as a child, I had refused to eat anything when I was in my human form. Except McDonald’s chicken nuggets. Mom could always get me to shift for those.

I dropped the top back on Suzy’s terrarium. “You be good. I’ll come by later this week for a real visit.” As ever, she radiated calm.

Pulling open the door and stepping out into the moonlit night, I followed Kade’s scent—now back to his normal, everyday smell, slightly spicy and all male—around to the back of the herpetarium, where he stood staring up at the stars.

“Hey,” I said, stepping up beside him.

“You know what that is?” he asked, pointing up into the sky.

“Sure. It’s the Big Dipper.” I extended my arm beside his. “And that’s the Little Dipper. And over there is Cassiopeia.”

He laughed. “I think that’s the first time any woman has said yes to that question.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Was I supposed go all feminine and fluttery and say no so you could teach me all about the stars?” I clasped my hands together under my chin and batted my lashes. I didn’t know how much he could see in the dark, but I suspected his shifter nature meant that his night vision was as good as mine.

“God, no,” he said.

“What will you do with that?” I asked, nodding at the vial of venom he still held. “We could ask my father to make the antivenin for us.” My voice trailed off. I wasn’t entirely certain how Dad had arranged for the last batch—it had been almost three years ago, and I hadn’t really been paying attention. In fact, I had been irritated that he thought he needed antivenin at all, since I was completely sure that I would never, ever bite anyone.

And I hadn’t. So far. But after years of dealing with the victims of pedophiles and abusers, I was less certain that I would never shift and attack. I could imagine circumstances that might call for it. I suspected I wouldn’t even hesitate to attack if it meant saving one of my clients. Especially the ones who were too small to defend themselves.

“What would we need to do to make the antivenin ourselves?” I asked.

Kade swirled the venom around in the container, watching the viscous yellow liquid stick to the sides, then slide down. “It’s a pretty labor-intensive process. Nothing we can do here.”

“Where, then?”

“I’ll have to take the venom back to my family home. It’s something of the family ... business.” An odd smile quirked his lip up as he spoke.

“So probably nothing I need to be involved in.”

“You’ve done your part. We’ll do ours next.”

“Do we need to hurry? Do you need to get that to them now?” I gestured at the vials. “What about Kirstie?”

“The polyvalent antivenin she had earlier is good against lamias, and she can’t have more for a while. It’ll take some time to produce the new antivenin, and the first step is to freeze it. I’ve got dry ice in a cooler in the pickup. I’ll go put this out there. I can drop you off at your place on my way. Unless you want to stay here.”

“Let’s get something to eat first—I’m starving. Want to go inside and see what my parents have available?”

“Sure.” He fell in step beside me. “I don’t know about you, but shifting always leaves me hungry.”

So it was common. I had been so focused on figuring out what was going on with the children, with our case, that I hadn’t even been able to figure out what questions I wanted to ask another shifter.

While Kade dropped the venom into the cooler, I stood with the back door propped open against my hip. Then he jogged back and followed me into the kitchen.

Opening the refrigerator, I rummaged around for a minute. “Beef fajitas work for you?” I asked, head still inside. I realized as I spoke how like my mother I sounded—and probably looked.

In the nature vs. nurture fight, nurture was definitely winning, right at the moment. I was definitely Mom’s child.

The cast-iron skillet was in its usual spot in a bottom cabinet, and I took comfort in the familiar tasks. I put Kade to work chopping an onion as I sliced the beef added spices to it. When I tossed everything in to sizzle, Kade pulled a barstool around from the other side of the counter and sat to watch me.

“So you really have no idea who your birth parents are?” he asked.

“Not a clue.”

“Or if you were part of a . . . what do you call a bunch of baby snakes? A litter?”

I paused, lifting the spatula out of the frying pan. “Huh. I don’t know. A baby snake is a hatchling. And a group of snakes is usually a nest. So I guess a nest of hatchlings?” I went back to stirring.

“Okay. So you don’t know if you were part of a nest of hatchlings, or if you were a single birth?”

“Not a clue. I don’t have any memories of the time before Dad found me.”

“It just seems odd that a second lamia would show up right now, just as you did.”

“You know, I didn’t just ‘show up’.” I waved the spatula in the air, indicating the house around us. “I’ve been right here for the last twenty-five years. I grew up in this house. I belong here every bit as much as you do.”

Because that was the crux of it, I realized. I’d been fighting off a deep, unspoken, almost unnoticed anger since I met the doctor—almost as much as I had been fighting off my attraction to him. The attraction was hard to explain. We should have been mortal enemies, but nothing in me wanted to hurt him. Not really. The anger, though? That was easier.

He knew who he was, where he belonged. He had grown up in an entire community of shapeshifters—one so big that they apparently had their own hospital, their own doctors, their own nurses. Hell, there were even entire neighborhoods chock-full of bobcat shifters, all ready at a moment’s notice to circle around their own. To shift into their animal forms and protect one another.

And me? I had Dad and Mom. I was deeply thankful for them, for the way they had taken me in and made me part of their family. But becoming human for them had also meant giving up much of my shapeshifter instincts. It had been a long, hard fight, but I had done it. I had come off the ranch and into human society, where I was not only accepted, I was useful. Important. I helped human children move past their hurts and their traumas, past their anxieties and damage. Helped them to build new lives, stronger and better adjusted, part of the community around them.

Just like I had.

Then I discovered that there were other shapeshifters out there.

Other people who, like me, had to hide what they were if they wanted to fit in with the rest of society.

And in the very next instant, I had learned that these people, these shapeshifters, were every bit as afraid of me as any human could ever be. Maybe more so, because they knew what I was really capable of.

My years of training, of self-denial, of work and pressure, of hiding what I was until I had the iron self-control necessary to maintain my human shape in any situation?

None of it meant a damn thing.

I realized I was crying, tears dropping down to sizzle in the frying pan next to the onions and the steak strips, when Kade slipped up behind me and took the spatula from my hand. Without ever letting go of my waist, he gave the fajitas a final stir, then moved the skillet to a back burner and turned off the stove. Then he pulled me up against him, pulling my head against his shoulder, and wrapped his arms around me.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispered into my hair.

I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I let myself sink into his comforting embrace, anyway.

After a moment, I dried my tears, sniffing. Kade handed me a paper towel from the dispenser by the sink, and I finished cooking.

We didn’t discuss my weepy spell during dinner. Instead, Kade entertained me with stories of his days as a medical intern. He had completed a regular, human medical degree, then finished his training at Kindred, learning the specifics of shapeshifter medicine.

“So did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?” I asked as we sat in the living room after eating.

“From the time I was three, according to my family. I can’t remember a time when that wasn’t what I wanted to do.” Kade leaned back on my parents’ couch. Seeing him there, so strangely at ease in a space that had rarely seen anyone but my family and their colleagues, sent a flutter through my stomach.

I hadn’t even dated in high school, and in college had never brought any of my boyfriends home to meet Mom and Dad. I knew what Dad would say—it wasn’t safe, for me or the men I dated. Anything that might give away my secret was dangerous. And any chance that I might shift and hurt someone was to be avoided.

Not that I ever had. Even in the midst of toddler tantrums or teenage fits, I had never struck out at my parents. Even when I shifted in the midst of anger, I remembered enough to keep the people I loved safe.

What would it have been like not to have to remember that I could kill the ones I loved?

“Tell me about your family,” I said.

“My family?” Kade kicked his booted feet up onto the ottoman in front of him, crossing them at the ankle as he stretched an arm behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “Well, there are a lot of us. In the wild, a mongoose litter is usually anywhere from two to five siblings, and that’s something that crosses over to the shifters, lots of multiples.”

“So you’re, what? A twin? Triplet?”

He laughed. “No, I was a rare singleton. Apparently my mother was deeply disappointed when I was born. I’m the eldest, and she had been expecting a whole pile of babies. She got them the next two times, though. She had triplets two years after I was born. And quintuplets the last time.”

“You have
eight
siblings?”